bumpthread posted:

RTC posted:

report by a security think tank

Please try to find and post here.

Sure, I'll try, but no promises.

The North Korean Ballistic Missile Program - Strategic Studies Institute - US Army War College

This report isn't the one I was referring to, it's a bit older (2008) and missile program has accelerated a fair bit since then, but it covers the same history of development (starts at page 14). I don't know why I saved this one and not the other.

Some excerpts:

The open source literature generally asserts that North Korea was able to obtain a few Soviet-made Scud-Bs from Egypt and, through a reverse-engineering program, successfully developed and produced its own version dubbed the Hwasŏng-5 (火星-5) Some sources contend that North Korean engineers accomplished this with little or no foreign support, which would be a remarkable achievement.

North Korea began to construct missile bases for the Hwasŏng-5 around 1985-86, just before the missile went into serial production around 1987. North Korea’s ballistic missile development then accelerated at a fast pace; as soon as mass production of the Hwasŏng-5began, North Korea began developing the Hwasŏng-6 (火星-6 or Scud-C), the “Nodong,”49 the Paektusan-1 (白頭山-1; commonly known as the Taepodong-1), the Paektusan-2 (白頭山-2; commonly known as the Taepodong-2), and the “Musudan”50 all within a short period of about 5 years (1987-92). This rapid sequence of development is remarkable and historically unprecedented for a small developing country. The open source literature generally attributes this rapid development to reverse engineering and “scaling up Scud technology.”51 However, missile systems cannot simply be “scaled up” in a linear fashion and fly. Missile engineers face limitations when altering design features to affect a missile’s flight performance. For example, they can reduce the weight of the warhead, or extend the length of the airframe to increase the volume of fuel and oxidizer in order to extend the range. However, these changes affect the missile’s mass, center of gravity, and flight dynamics, and the airframe’s capacity to handle these changes is limited.

Despite the difficulties of missile development and the fact that other countries had tried and failed to develop medium- and intermediate-range missiles, North Korea began to produce Nodong prototypes around the same time it was beginning mass production of the Hwasŏng-6 (Scud-C). The first Nodong deployments were in February 1995, even though the system only had two flight tests--one catastrophic failure and one successful flight at a reduced range.68 By early 1997, at least 10 Nodongs had been deployed, and Pyongyang was exporting the system’s components and technology to Iran and was preparing to ship Nodongs to Pakistan.69 Iran’s flight tests of the Shehab-3, which is based on the Nodong, and Pakistan’s Ghuari flight tests have reportedly been sources of data on Nodong flight performance for North Korean engineers.70

Schmucker argues that engineers typically have needed 20-50 missile samples, extensive foreign support, and several flight tests; however, the consensus in the open source literature is that North Korea successfully reverse engineered the Scud-B in a couple of years with only a few samples and no foreign assistance. This remarkable engineering feat has led some analysts to believe that the Hwasŏng-5/6 is more typical of licensed production, and that the Nodong was designed and developed by Russians.82

Large parts of this report are the author being befuddled by the scope and pace of development and finding racist, evidence free assertions by American and European officials and "experts" (of the Brown Moses variety) that the DPRK Must Have had significant foreign assistance. How could mind controlled starved peasants do this all by themselves.

Edited by RTC (April 21, 2017 22:40:53)

aerdil posted:

Why is everything in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea done "just for us"?https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/world/asia/north-korea-nuclear-test-volleyball.html

The volleyball games, played in the middle of that international crisis, were probably intended to send a message, analysts said, as the North Koreans are aware that the nuclear test site is under intense scrutiny. But what meaning the North wanted the games to convey is unclear.

They didn't catch everything the first time around, here's the updated one

Edited by fape (April 21, 2017 20:55:27)

Ufuk_Surekli posted:

this is the first post in many years that has me feeling hopeful for the future

ilmdge posted:

I have a feeling the US finds a way to keep THAAD in place though